


you missed my heart

by kiranxrys



Series: fathers [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Family, Garak Centric, Garak's dark and haunting past and all that, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Prompt: Secret Relatives, Tain Is a Terrible Father
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-31
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26212717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiranxrys/pseuds/kiranxrys
Summary: He ought to have got used to it by now.Elim Garak receives some news.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Series: fathers [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1903705
Comments: 1
Kudos: 58
Collections: Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020





	you missed my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Star Trek Bingo Summer 2020 event.
> 
> Frankly, I wanted to write a garashir kidfic and realised I didn't have the time. So we're going for a three-parter like my kiradax series, and here's a bit of a prelude to set up the main story! Named for the song You Missed My Heart, specifically Phoebe Bridgers' haunting cover.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” the doctor is saying, straightening his uniform as he takes his seat opposite Garak. His Starfleet badge, reflecting the bright light of the replimat in a way that stings Garak’s eyes, is slightly off-centre, he notices. A few too many centimetres to Julian’s left, tilted on an odd angle. He resists the urge to point it out and force the doctor to set it right. It would hardly bother him, on a typical basis.

Everything has been out of place since his return from the Gamma Quadrant. Just by an inch or two. A hair’s breadth. Enough to needle its way beneath his skin and make him feel as though the station he left was not the same one he returned to after the storm.

“No need to apologise, Doctor,” he replies, affecting a detached air. “Any update on that _mystery_ ship of yours?”

“Yes, I’ve just come out of a meeting,” Julian says, not even pausing to consider whether this is information he should be sharing or not, given the company. “It was a Cardassian medical vessel – on a mercy trip, _allegedly_. Commanded by a Kiasha… a Kiasha Leit, I think it was. The rogue Klingon ship didn’t even wait until it’d crossed over from Cardassian territory before it opened fire.”

“A rather unfortunate diplomatic incident, to say the least,” Garak remarks. His eyes are on his half-empty cup of tea, made the way Julian seems to enjoy it. It’s too sweet for him, saccharine flavour clashing with the bitterness on his tongue, the sour taste that creeps its way down the back of his throat.

“To say the _very_ least,” the doctor agrees, stretching his legs out and yawning. “It’s mayhem. Sisko’s been on calls with Starfleet Command and the Klingons all morning, trying to come up with an explanation that’ll suit the Cardassians.”

“Not an easy task.” Cardassia will accept no excuse for these deaths. That sort of conciliatory compromise is not in its nature – it is not the Federation, which would perhaps turn a blind eye for the sake of peace. _No, not an easy task at all._ An impossible one. Cardassians will see the blood of these medics and they will see it dripping off the walls of Deep Space 9. He remembers something Tain told him once, a satisfied smile on his face as he said, _keep your grudges and count them well._ Garak can feel himself losing his sense of… of presence, his awareness of the world. It’s an uncomfortable restriction of clarity as his mind draws in on itself, cutting off the opportunity for him to consider more conspicuous reactions to the truth.

He had his suspicions, before the doctor spoke. He had his hopes also. Foolish hopes, hopes based in useless sentiment and falsified affection. The world beyond Julian has faded into a sort of blur, and the doctor’s eyes are so bright and suddenly concerned, brow creased. That ridiculous communication badge of his. It’s beginning to do his head in.

Garak remembers the day he came to know of Kiasha Leit quite clearly, because it was the day he was told she had to die. Perhaps _die_ is too strong of a term. Disappear might be more accurate. Either way, they had given him one week, and at the end of it, Kiasha was to be gone. They never told him why. They never did, in those days.

It was the ship’s name, overheard in a conversation between Odo and Major Kira that morning, which had dragged up that particular long-buried memory. In Federation Standard, the name might translate to something along the lines of _that which brings purity._ He recalls reading it on Kiasha’s file in the Obsidian Order headquarters on the far side of Cardassia Prime, below the surface of a city in catacombs that were filled with the scent of damp stone.

She had not been political. Not influential by any means. A simple doctor, in command of a small medical aid vessel. Her mother had died when she was a child; she had no other recorded family. An orphan, someone without a place in society. Leit was the name she had apparently chosen for herself – one stolen from a somewhat-known classic novel of Cardassia Prime Garak had remembered reading in his younger years. She had no date of birth, either. No _place_ of birth. Nothing to give her purpose in the world she had been born into. And yet there she was, a successful commander in her chosen field, and the next marked target in a long list of people Garak had the cold honour of making go away.

He was considering pressing for answers when he saw the photo. Sharp eyes, a round face, broad shoulders. He knew then. _Poor woman._ Enabran Tain was not in the room at the time, not even in the province. But Garak could feel his bitter gaze, could see his bloody fingers all over the screen on which Kiasha’s picture was displayed. She was younger than Garak was, by quite a few years at least. She was going to be docking to pick up supplies the next day.

Vaguely, he can hear Julian trying to talk to him, beyond the odd bubble of muffled sound. The doctor, that frail thing he became attached to years ago at this very table, no less entrancing now than he was then. More so, for all the years of conversations and countless secrets revealed have added to his beauty. It would be an unwise idea to examine how deeply Julian Bashir has managed to engrain himself into Garak’s life, forming part of the torn and blood-stained tapestry of his existence. Some days, he can only be glad that Tain is dead. The doctor would’ve made for such a delicious target for him. Just as Kiasha had.

He had found her in a warehouse, examining medical supplies. Perhaps he had been expecting a timid, lost kind of creature, but Kiasha Leit was not that. He only just drew his emergency phaser in time, seeing the glint of metal in her hand. He tried to make himself aim for her chest – an instant, painless death, another mission completed without error. His phaser bolt barely scraped her shoulder, and the impact came with a swooping nausea in the pit of his stomach, one he thought he had forgotten long ago.

He had tried. He truly had. Suddenly Tain was there again, breathing down the back of his neck, gruff words of disappointment and disgust as Kiasha stumbled back, injured but very much alive. Just one more shot would’ve done it. Kiasha knew who he was, he realised, when their eyes met. Family. Simply not in any way that counted.

“You missed,” he can remember her saying then, a smile spreading across her face that reminded him so disturbingly of his own, and of Tain’s, that at first, he thought he was imagining it. “You missed my heart.”

Garak raised the phaser again. “You can hardly run forever, Kiasha,” he told her, finger fixed on the trigger. His own voice sounded alien to him. It had all its sickly, murderous charm, its bitter venom buried beneath. None of its strength. The words were a façade, a Kiasha saw beyond them, he could tell. She looked at him as if she _knew_ him. A clever woman. It made what was required of him all the more distasteful.

She had laughed then, and his hold slipped. “Neither can you, _Elim.”_ He watched her struggle to her feet, clutching her injured shoulder. Her eyes blazed with life – a sharpness he felt had been stripped from him young ago, not an innocence, but a conviction.

“You know of me, then?” He knew he should aim again, pull that trigger, let it be over with.

“I know about all of us,” Kiasha replied. “The ones that are left, in any case. I wondered when he’d come for me.” She looked at him with such abhorrence that it managed to break through the wall of stone, to the flesh and blood beneath. “I never imagined he would send _you.”_

_All of us._ That was the first and last day he had allowed himself to wonder how many, who, and where, and for how much longer. There was shouting in the distance. Somebody started to ring an emergency alarm.

“You have my apologies, of course,” he began, attempting to crush uncertainty. “It’s nothing personal.”

The knife – nothing more than a switchblade, the length of his thumb – caught him right between two sets of ribs. She missed his heart, too. The blade cut deep into his stomach, half gutting him, and the blood was slick on his fingers when he reached down to touch the wound Kiasha had made. He had dropped his weapon.

“It is personal, Elim,” Kiasha murmured, easing him to the ground. She was wearing gloves, he noticed. “I’ll be leaving tonight. Do try to stay alive.” A small smile crossed her face. “Don’t let him have you. You’ll have nothing if he has you.”

There was no one to visit him in the hospital. He remained there, alone, until he was strong enough to walk and left unannounced in the comforting cover of night. Kiasha Leit was gone, off on a years-long mission to bring medical care to the less fortunate of the system. He can still _see_ that look in her eyes as she stabbed him with perfect clarity, perhaps because it was painfully familiar. A cold pity.

There had been others. Might be, even now. He has never been the one to find them.

“Garak, are you still in there?”

He jumps, all of a sudden aware of the doctor’s fingers lightly touching his own hand where it rests on the replimat table. The replimat. Deep Space 9, of course, once called Terok Nor. And it is Julian Bashir sitting before him, brow furrowed with a faint expression of worry. He forgot somewhere, in the haze. Sometimes he truly feels as though he never came back from the Gamma Quadrant at all. Tain did have him, in the end.

Extracting himself from his own mind is a struggle. Introspection. The fool’s way of passing the time.

“Hello? Bashir to Garak?”

“I’m not deaf,” he manages to say, a little louder than he was intending.

“I asked, did you know anyone on board?” Julian repeats, frowning. “You seemed sort of… distracted, for a minute there.”

He coughs, forcing down an uncomfortable wave of emotional honesty. “Ah… no, Doctor,” he replies. “Fortunately not. No… but it is… well, _concerning,_ isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“Oh, the _state_ of things,” he says, avoiding the friendly warmth of Julian’s gaze. “It offers rather little hope for the future.”

Julian sighs, leaning across the table with an unguarded expression of fondness spreading across his charming face. “Come on, Garak. The destruction of one innocent ship doesn’t spell the end of the entire universe, you know.”

Not the entire universe, perhaps. But Cardassia is crumbling. It is tearing itself apart, trampling whatever was salvageable of its reputation, its legacy, into dust. Scum like Dukat survives, the well-intentioned die. There is no Obsidian Order to watch from hidden towers, if their watching ever did much good in the first place. Garak cannot help being disgusted by it all.

A father first, and now a sister. In broken, corrupted senses of the words. _Family._ The thought tastes foul enough for him to wish to spit it out. Maybe, if Elim Garak were a better man, he would have found Kiasha in his exile. Done for her as was his duty, as a Cardassian. Kiasha, who had kept to her medic’s ship and for whom he still wears a scar. He never had them remove it. He told Tain it was to remind him of his failure, his weakness. It was not quite a lie.

Julian blinks, and for a brief moment, Garak finds himself caught up in the delicate flutter of the doctor’s eyelashes. The unfortunate news appears to have damaged his usual defences. A twitch of old anxiety – the memory of awakening to those white Infirmary walls, inexplicably alive, and learning from a nurse that the brave Doctor Bashir had gone off to confront Enabran Tain himself to save Garak’s life – pinches in his chest. Tain may be dead, but he lingers, in his own way. The dear doctor is so fragile. Even beneath Garak’s most careful touch, he could break.

He’s a good man. The last thing he needs is the blood of Enabran Tain leaving stains in his otherwise pristine world. Garak was a fool to think he could ever be more to Julian Bashir than a mysterious danger, an enticing threat. Kiasha’s words ring in his ears. Tain did have him. He had him all the way to the Gamma Quadrant and back. And Garak can have nothing, nothing for that crime. Not family, never a sister nor a brother. Certainly never the doctor, not in this timeline.

“I was wondering whether you wanted to pick a time for that tennis match we discussed last week,” Julian says. “Now that you’re back on the station, you know… for good. I only have a half shift the day after tomorrow, if that suits.”

“I’m afraid I may have to postpone our plans,” he replies hurriedly. “I’ve been rather… inundated with orders since my return, to tell the truth, Doctor, and I simply cannot afford to dedicate my time to sporting exercises when there is work to be done.” It’s an obvious lie, not even particularly well hidden behind politeness. Julian’s face falls, but he drags the mask back up a moment later, shrugging as if it’s nothing at all.

“Don’t worry about it. If you ever do get the free time, just let me know.”

“Of course,” he says. More lies. It’s the man he was raised to be. Whatever others of his blood might have existed out there in the universe, they escaped that fate. _And met a worse one, in the end._

Sons and daughters of Tain. Even in death, that man’s nails dig into a person’s skin and refuse to let them go. He ought to have got used to it by now.

He only hopes Kiasha heard the news before she died.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading :)


End file.
